I said I wouldn’t post anything on Saturdays or Sundays, but this is too good to pass up.
Pope Leo will send a video message to Mass in Chicago at a large stadium on the same day that Trump ordered a military parade to celebrate his birthday.
The Pope will probably address one million people. How many will attend Trump’s multi-million dollar parade?
I like Pope Leo more and more every day. He is devoted to the message of the Biblical Jesus: love, mercy, compassion, devotion to the well-being of every person. Heal the sick, comfort the suffering, feed the hungry, welcome the stranger.
Republican Jesus has a different message: get rich by any means possible; ignore the sick and hungry; build your riches on the suffering of others; slam your door to the stranger; show no mercy to stragglers; love the unborn, inflict misery on the born; love your guns and keep them loaded.
Amid a deepening literacy crisis, there’s been a focus on how to close the achievement gap, but Natalie Wexler sees the key problem undermining the American educational system a little differently.
The education author maintains that we can’t truly reach equity in achievement unless we first close “The Knowledge Gap.”
Natalie Wexler, literacy expert and author of “The Knowledge Gap.” Courtesy photo
She also argues that, in the rush to embrace the science of reading, some have focused so intently on the need for phonics in the early years that they have overlooked the need for systematic knowledge-building, which is also a core part of structured literacy, as is vocabulary. There’s more to the science of reading than phonics, experts have long suggested.
Wexler is best known for her book “The Knowledge Gap,” but she also has a podcast and newsletter on the subject. The frequent Forbes contributor recently made time to discuss with EdSource why background knowledge is so fundamental to reading, why it’s crucial to teach kids about the world, from science to history, if you want them to become deep readers.
A rich sense of context is key to fueling both vocabulary growth and reading comprehension, the ability to make inferences and connections while reading, paving the way for critical thinking and analysis, cornerstones of higher education.
Why do you think there are so many misunderstandings about the science of reading, and why is it often getting boiled down to just phonics?
A large part of it is that the phonics issue is more familiar. We’ve been hearing about it for decades. Since the 1950s, if not before, and it’s less complicated than the whole comprehension message. Not to say it’s simple, but it’s easy to grasp. You want kids to be able to read, you have to help them sound out words, and you have to teach that explicitly, and you can see results pretty quickly when you do. Right? Whereas building knowledge is this very gradual process. The way we measure progress is mostly through the standardized reading comprehension test. And it takes a long time, years sometimes, to see the fruits of your labors reflected in standardized test scores.
Has the phonics debate overshadowed other aspects of how the brain learns how to read?
I do think that the focus on just the problems with phonics instruction or decoding instruction has given rise to the assumption that the other aspects of reading instruction are lined up with science, that they accord with what scientific evidence tells us will work. And with comprehension, that’s actually not the case.
Why is there so little understanding of cognitive science in the classroom? What do we need to know about working memory, for example?
I certainly didn’t know about working memory being only able to hold maybe four or five items of new information for about 20 seconds before it starts to become overwhelmed. And that’s the scientific explanation, but I also think once you give people concrete examples, it starts to make sense at a gut level. The goal is for kids to acquire enough general academic vocabulary and familiarity with the complex syntax of written language to enable them to read and understand texts on topics they don’t already know about.
At some point you have built up enough understanding of the world to learn through reading, is that right?
If you’re a proficient reader, that’s a very efficient way of learning, through reading. That’s the goal. But how do we enable students to acquire that kind of general knowledge? Really the only way is through teaching them about a lot of specific topics, because the vocabulary, the syntax, doesn’t stick in the abstract, it needs a meaningful context. But there are different ways for kids to acquire that general knowledge.
Why is background knowledge so important to reading comprehension?
Vocabulary and background knowledge are inextricably linked. So, if you’ve got baseball vocabulary, you’re going to have a better chance of understanding a text on baseball. If you’re practicing finding the main idea and you’re reading a text about the solar system and you have no idea what the solar system is, your ability to decode the words is probably not going to be enough. You need to have some background knowledge in place in order to acquire more knowledge from that text. To understand a word like “dynasty,” you need to have some idea of monarchies. You can’t just memorize the definition and really understand it, right? But you could acquire that understanding by learning about African dynasties, Asian dynasties, European dynasties, indigenous dynasties. There are lots of different paths to that goal.
Why is this an equity issue? Is it because we’re not really spending as much time on history and science in the classroom these days but you don’t notice that as much with higher income children because those families are better able to fill in the gaps outside of school?
That’s right. But I’ve heard from educators and administrators these days that even higher-income kids are coming in with poor oral language skills because people are on their phones so much, and even more-affluent, more highly educated parents are not engaging in that kind of dialogue with kids that leads to rich oral language abilities. This has long been a problem with kids from less highly educated families. I think it really has to do with the level of parental education more than with socioeconomic status or race. If you have a poor kid whose parents both have Ph.D.s, but they’re struggling because they’re adjunct professors, that kid’s probably going to be exposed to a lot of academic language and vocabulary at home. But other kids rely on school for that. I’m not saying that education can completely level the playing field, but it could be doing way more than it is currently doing to give all kids the kind of exposure to academic knowledge and vocabulary that kids from highly educated families acquire more or less naturally.
So it’s more related to education than income. Is part of the issue also that schools prefer inquiry-based learning to direct instruction? We let the kids try to figure things out on their own instead of explaining it to them.
Where this belief in discovery and inquiry has really taken hold is at the elementary level. I do think that this focus on comprehension skills and strategies, whether consciously or not, it’s connected to that idea that we shouldn’t be the ‘sages on the stages’ just pouring information into kids’ brains. If you teach them a skill, like finding the main idea or making inferences, then they can use that skill to discover knowledge on their own, acquire knowledge on their own. That’s the theory. But it often doesn’t work in practice. It’s hard to make an inference if you don’t really understand the subject matter. Some of these skills do need to be taught, but others really are just sort of natural outgrowths of knowledge. I want to make it clear, it’s not like you have to choose between building knowledge and teaching skills and strategies. It’s a question of what you put in the foreground.
Why are deep dives into a topic, say dinosaurs or mummies, more compelling for children than randomly chosen abstract passages, to drive comprehension?
If you get deeply into a topic, it’s much more interesting than if you just skim the surface. … The power of narrative is really important. It doesn’t have to be fiction, it could be a story from history. I’ve seen second graders fascinated by the war of 1812. Teachers are like, how are second graders going to be able to deal with that? Well, if they’ve learned about the American Revolution and they have the background knowledge, they get fascinated by it because they understand what’s going on. They understand the issues, but they don’t know who won. They’re like, oh, no, America’s going to lose!
Transitional Kindergarten students in Garden Grove Unified School District benefit from a full day of high quality instruction.
Courtesy: Garden Grove Unified School District
According to a recent survey on education, overwhelming majorities of Californians think that preschool is important for student success in K–12 schools, and a strong majority supports state-funded programs such as transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds.
California is on course to make TK a universal option for California families. Universal TK in our districts provides a full-day program with credentialed teachers and full-time aides. In 2021, the state laid out a five-year timeline to expand TK, gradually phasing in younger students each year, until 2025-26 — when all 4-year-old children will have the ability to enroll.
The intent of this foundational program is to meet a critical need for quality early learning and care for children at no cost to families. This allows parents to work full time to support their families, knowing that their children are receiving educational services that lay a foundation for academic success and support children’s development. Our districts serve distinct communities that have in common a high proportion of low-income students and significant numbers of English learners. As we shared information about the TK expansion with families, unsurprisingly, we heard from many who wanted to enroll their 4-year-old children, including young learners whose fourth birthdays fall outside the annually expanding eligibility window.
Our families urged us to accelerate the implementation of the early TK timeline and provide universal TK as soon as possible.
Recognizing our families’ significant need and the benefits of early learning, our districts decided to get ahead of the curve. We planned ahead for an accelerated two-year rollout of transitional kindergarten for students born through June 30. We knew we would not receive average daily attendance (ADA) funding for students whose birthdates fell outside the state’s rollout plan, but as we were planning well in advance of the 2023-24 school year, we were unaware of any penalties for early rollout as they did not exist at that time. We budgeted accordingly for the expansion of our enrollment and made plans to staff our TK classrooms months in advance of school starting.
Our districts are now facing penalties in the millions of dollars for taking these proactive steps. And we are not alone. Based on a voluntary informal survey, seven of 28 districts in Orange County likely face penalties for accelerated implementation. We believe many districts across the state are similarly impacted, with some yet unaware of the fiscal hit for early expansion.
Last July — months after districts started planning for the 2023-24 school year — Gov. Gavin Newsom signed education budget trailer bill SB 114, which created new statutory requirements for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years for school districts offering early transitional kindergarten. These changes included a maximum class size of 20 students and a 1:10 adult-to-student ratio, which is smaller than regular TK ratios. No additional funding was provided to meet these new requirements. The trailer bill imposed significant fiscal penalties for districts if they did not comply with the new provisions.
Districts like ours were not able to meet the lower class size requirements because the school year was weeks away from starting when this bill was signed. We had no time to change course. Many families in large urban districts like ours are most in need of TK due to families’ inability to afford private preschool and lack of free preschool options. Turning away families who had enrolled their child in TK and who desperately needed this care was unthinkable.
School districts plan and budget — inclusive of staffing, facilities and bargaining — at least nine months in advance of the next school year, which typically begins in early or mid-August. This includes communicating with families so they can make plans for their children, and enrolling students in January and February for the following school year. This is necessary so that schools will be appropriately staffed and classrooms are ready before the first day of school.
The steep fiscal penalties we face for early enrollment in TK threaten our fiscal outlook in a budget year that is already anticipated to be lean.
There is an opportunity to make this right.
The Legislature and Newsom administration can waive the current year, 2023-24 fiscal penalties and allow districts appropriate time to plan and implement requirements for 2024-25. Actions can be taken via legislation — Assembly Bill 2548, authored by Assemblymember Tri Ta, would waive the current school year penalties on districts offering early TK; another option is to enact the waiver for 2023-24 through budget trailer bill language. We, and more than 40 leaders of districts and county offices of education, are urging lawmakers to take action now.
The districts that are impacted by penalties for early enrollment in TK serve high-poverty communities where free or low-cost full-day preschools are not available and parents cannot afford paid preschools.
Making early TK available to as many families as possible is the right thing to do. Approving the waiver of the fiscal penalties for 2023-24 will save our districts from millions of dollars in penalties and protect our fiscal stability while we continue to make great strides in serving early learners.
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Gabriela Mafi is superintendent of the Garden Grove Unified School District. John Garcia is superintendent of the Downey Unified School District
The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin.
Credit: John Joanino/Advancement Project California
Delaine Eastin, the only woman elected as California’s superintendent of public instruction, died Tuesday from complications of a stroke. She was 76.
She assumed the nonpartisan office in 1995, when the superintendent’s main power was persuasion. In a court decision preceding her election, the State Board of Education had wrested sole power to set state education policy from the state superintendent. But admirers said she used the public pulpit and verbal skills to effectively champion issues she cared about. These include raising academic standards, lowering class sizes and instilling the importance of nature in schools.
“Delaine was regarded as one of the great orators of the Legislature,” said Jack O’Connell, a fellow Democrat who served with her in the Legislature and succeeded her as state superintendent. Next to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, Eastin was the most in demand on the speech circuit, he said. “Few could engender the kind of emotion and passion she delivered in every speech.”
Delaine Eastin
Calling her “a trailblazer in public education who will forever inspire us,” current State Superintendent Tony Thurmond said Eastin “was integral in establishing standards for what students should know and be able to do,” then developing statewide assessments and a school accountability system for the results. She also strengthened the framework for financial oversight of school districts through county offices of education and a quasi-state agency, the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team.
“When I came into office, there was no testing. There were no academic content standards. And there was no system of school accountability at all,” Eastin told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003. “And we had the largest class size in America.”
Taking advantage of the state’s financially flush years, she made smaller classes a priority and helped persuade Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature to invest $2.3 billion to cut the size of K-3 classes from 30 to 20 students.
In 1995, she called for a garden in every school. With the help of Berkeley restaurateur Alice Waters, she inspired the establishment of gardens in more than 3,000 schools. California became the first state to join the Clinton Team Nutrition effort to improve school nutrition. She oversaw curriculum guides on how to teach the academic content standards through nutrition, gardening, and cooking.
O’Connell called her “fearless in the constant fight for better school funding and put herself in the middle of every battle on behalf of kids.”
She was an early advocate of early childhood education, establishing a preschool task force of educators, business leaders, civil rights and children’s advocates that called for universal preschool. She established the state’s Teacher of the Year program; Thurmond honored her in this year’s state ceremony.
Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, a former school board member in San Jose, said Eastin left “an indelible imprint” on California’s school system. “Delaine was more than a colleague; she was a mentor and friend,” he said.
Born in San Diego, she moved to San Carlos as a child and was the first in the family to graduate from college, earning a bachelor’s degree from UC Davis and a master’s from UC Santa Barbara in political science. After teaching women’s studies and politics at De Anza College and Cañada College, she worked as a strategic planner for what was then Pacific Telephone before being elected to the City Council of Union City. She served four years in the Assembly in a district representing pats of Alameda and Santa Clara counties.
After serving the maximum two terms as state superintendent, she returned to politics in a brief run for governor as a voice for progressives in the 2018 Democratic primary. She was sixth with 3.4% of the vote. (For a transcript of an interview with then Executive Director Louis Freedberg during that campaign, go here.)
Eastin recalled to Orange County Register reporter Hanna Kang last year that women legislators were few and “especially close to each other” when she was in the Legislature. “Women did look after one another because we sort of had to, because we would be dismissed or spoken down to in some instances unless we stood up for each other.”
“I remember in the early days, there were people who wouldn’t let me on the members’ elevator because I was a girl, and I couldn’t possibly be a member,” she said.
Plans are underway for a public celebration to be held this summer.
A group of education leaders and experts representing both community colleges and four-year universities agreed during EdSource’s Wednesday roundtable discussion that dual admission might be one of the most promising solutions to California’s broken transfer systems.
“At the end of the day, it’s really important for us to ensure that transfer is as seamless as possible, that students have the information they need upfront, that it’s actionable, that they’re able to take the courses they need and get through to transfer,” said Hans Johnson, a senior fellow at the PPIC Higher Education Center.
Panelists at the roundtable — “Is dual admission a solution to California’s broken transfer system?” — agreed that dual admission should be available statewide for all interested students in order to ensure more seamless transfers.
The roundtable included discussion of a state law passed in 2021 that sought to improve transfer rates in California. The postsecondary education trailer bill, or Assembly Bill 132, asked the University of California and required the California State University systems to create such programs for students who didn’t “meet freshman admissions eligibility criteria due to limitations in the high school curriculum offered or personal or financial hardship.”
going deeper
Visit the virtual event page for EdSource’s dual admission roundtable for more information about the speakers and a list of resources.
Dual admission programs offer students guaranteed admission into certain four-year universities after completing a specific list of lower division courses at a community college. This is different from dual enrollment, a process in which students earn college credit while in high school.
This law could potentially transform the state’s higher education pathways, given that California ranks 41st when it comes to high school graduates who enroll in a four-year university but third in its share who enroll in community college, according to Johnson.
“What that means is that transfer students are critical to ensuring that California really provides a meaningful ladder of educational and economic mobility for our population,” Johnson said.
While the state law calls for a pilot program, CSU’s dual admission program is permanent. It’s called the Transfer Success Pathway Program and launched in fall 2023 with an initial cohort of 2,000 students, said April Grommo, CSU’s assistant vice chancellor of enrollment management.
“We purposely are creating a statewide system,” Grommo said. “We also know that students transfer or take courses at multiple community colleges, and we wanted all of that credit to be reflected in the system and for students to be able to accurately track how many units they’ve completed, what their transferable GPA is, and how they fulfill general education and major prerequisites so that they truly understand the courses that they need to transfer.”
CSU’s program includes all campuses, though some of the most impacted majors are excluded, while UC’s program is limited to six of the nine campuses. CSU also goes beyond what’s required by law by offering dual admission to just about any student who was rejected or simply chose not to attend CSU.
“Just for scale, there’s 162 community college students in the dual admission program for UC, and there’s 2,008 students in the dual admission program for CSU currently in the community colleges,” said panelist John Stanskas, vice chancellor for educational services and support at the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office.
Roundtable panelists also discussed existing programs that could be used as a model for more statewide access to dual admission.
A significant benefit of his dual admission program, called ADVANCE, has been the clarity of knowing exactly which classes he’d need to take at his current campus and at George Mason University after transferring. A clear understanding of the courses he’d be required to take was important, he said, as he decided whether to pursue computer science versus computer engineering.
“The fact that I’m able to see not only what classes I need to take here at NOVA (Northern Virginia Community College) but also what it transfers to and what it transfers as, I think that’s one of the biggest benefits of the program,” said Todd, who is on track to transfer to George Mason University in one year.
“I don’t have to worry I’m wasting my money, I don’t have to worry I’m wasting my time. … I don’t have to be a junior taking freshman classes because I didn’t know that this history class was a prereq for this other class.”
Todd said he’s also benefited from having access to a second campus.
“That’s something that I wouldn’t have if this ADVANCE program doesn’t exist because I have access to everything a GMU student has access to because I’m considered a GMU student, even though I’m at NOVA,” Todd said, referring to George Mason University.
Some GMU resources available to Todd are their libraries, a lab with 3D printers, and access to their student clubs.
One of the longstanding challenges that California community college students face when transferring to a CSU or UC is the need to align the courses on their transcripts with the courses they must take after transferring. It’s a challenge that NOVA and GMU avoided by clearly outlining required courses for students enrolled in ADVANCE, but one that students in Long Beach City College’s initial dual admission program often came up against.
In its initial iteration of the program in 2008, Long Beach City College partnered with Long Beach Unified and CSU Long Beach to create the Long Beach College Promise. Understanding which courses students were required to take at each level of their higher education journey, however, “was almost like a maze that they were trying to demystify,” said panelist Nohel C. Corral, executive vice president of student services at Long Beach City College.
In 2019, the college relaunched a revised version called Long Beach College Promise 2.0, Corral said.
“We mapped the courses students would need to take in their first two years here at Long Beach City College and what it would look like in their last two years at California State University Long Beach,” Corral said. “And that required a lot of coordination between the instructional faculty at both Long Beach City College and at Long Beach State, in addition to counselors and advisers in both institutions.”
The relaunched program included 38 students enrolled at Long Beach City College who were also given CSU Long Beach student identification cards with access to the CSU library, sporting events and career services, among other resources. The following year, the cohort included 162 students, which grew to 774 by the fall of 2021.
“We’re still tracking them and collecting data to assess the transfer rates for those cohorts, but for that fall 2019 cohort, we saw significant transfer rates compared to other populations,” he said.
The panelists agreed that geography may become a potential challenge in the development of dual admission programs statewide, given California’s size. They also agreed, however, that regional partnerships become crucial in those areas.
Just last week, for example, Chico State announced a dual admission partnership with seven community colleges. Fresno State and Fresno City College also have a partnership; likewise, CSU Bakersfield has one with Bakersfield College.
Corral suggested “starting off with the data and seeing where the students are transferring to, if you don’t have a local CSU in your direct vicinity, so that you can start those dialogues and start those engagements with those CSUs that your students are going to.”
Stanskas, of the community colleges’ chancellor’s office, said that dual admission can be “especially important for our place-bound students who can’t go a hundred miles or 500 miles to a program. They have family; they have commitments; they have lives that they are unable to move that way.”
Grommo said, “We would love to see every student that’s transitioning from high school and decides that the community college pathway is their pathway that they need to take, really enroll in the Transfer Success Pathway program so we can support them early in their process and help them through this transfer journey.”
This story was updated to accurately reflect Jaden Todd’s name.
Nine rural counties, located more than 60 miles from university teacher preparation programs, struggle to recruit enough teachers to fill classrooms.
Credit: Julie Leopo for EdSource
Nine rural California counties, most struggling with student achievement and teacher recruitment, are in teacher education deserts, according to a report released Tuesday from the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools.
“We know that research suggests that teachers are more likely to complete their student teaching and also secure employment close to where they receive their teacher training,” said Kai Mathews, project director for the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools.
As a result, six of the nine counties have a higher percentage of underprepared teachers than the state average of 4% to 5%, according to the study. Of the nine counties, Modoc and Lassen have the highest percentage of underprepared teachers at 14% and 17% respectively.
Underprepared teachers work on intern credentials or emergency-style permits that don’t require them to complete teacher training, or on waivers that allow them to teach a subject outside their credential.
Because the state requires that districts only hire underprepared teachers if fully qualified teachers are not available, high rates of underprepared teachers are an indicator that districts in that county are struggling to recruit and hire qualified teachers, said UCLA researchers.
Rural teachers scarce
There could be many reasons teachers are hard to find in rural areas, including fewer nearby institutions of higher education, which leads to a lower than average percentage of residents with bachelor’s degrees and therefore a smaller pool of potential teacher candidates, according to the study.
Counties that border other states and countries also have significantly higher teacher vacancy rates compared with nonborder districts, said Hui Huang, a researcher on the project. All nine of the California counties classified as teacher education deserts are bordered by either Oregon, Nevada, Arizona or Mexico.
“Rural school districts face significant challenges in recruiting and retaining teachers,” said Yuri Calderon, executive director of the Small School Districts’ Association. “In addition to the proximity to teacher educational programs, rural communities face challenges related to competition from higher urban compensation schedules, housing shortages and a lack of support resources commonly found in urban areas.”
Rural counties also lose talented young residents who go to urban and suburban areas for more opportunity, Huang said. In small districts, the loss of even one teacher can impact course availability for students, according to Learning Policy Institute research.
Teacher shortage affects students
The geographic location of a school district plays a significant role in teacher recruitment and retention, and ultimately in the educational outcomes of the district’s students, according to the report.
Students in each of these counties, except Mono, fell below the state average on the English language arts portion of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, also known as CAASPP, in the 2022-23 school year. All nine counties fell below the state average of students who meet standards on the math portion of the test.
Low-performing schools may struggle to attract teachers due to negative public perceptions, Huang said. Research also indicates that highly qualified educators are substantially more likely to leave low-performing schools.
Time for creative solutions
School districts in Mono County have had to get creative to fill teacher positions, despite their prime location near Yosemite National Park and Mammoth Lakes, said Stacey Adler, Mono County superintendent of schools. One district with a dual-immersion program hired teachers from South America to fill open teaching positions, she said.
The high cost of housing and a growing disinterest in the profession among young people are the biggest hurdles to hiring new teachers in Mono County, Adler said.
“We have got to start them early because, quite frankly, there aren’t a lot of kids that say they want to be teachers these days,” she said.
Adler taught child development at Mammoth High School for two years in an attempt to get students interested in teaching, she said. Now the school plans to use a portion of a recent grant to develop a K-12 education pathway at the school.
“Our rural students and our rural teacher workforce, as small as it is, is suffering,” said Annamarie Francois, associate dean of public engagement at UCLA and a member of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. “We have a responsibility and an obligation to our community to bring our creative solutions and innovations to bear on those parts of our state.”
One answer may be creating teacher credentialing programs at community colleges in these counties, according to the study. Although all nine teaching education deserts are not located near a university teacher preparation program, five are within 60 miles of a community college.
Early childhood education programs already in place at community colleges could be expanded to K-12 licensing programs, according to the report. The state could also work with county offices of education to develop residency programs so that teacher candidates could earn a credential without leaving the area to take classes or to student teach.
Multiple states, like Florida, Texas and Washington, already offer similar credentialing pathways.
“Expanding local college programs to include K-12 certification, particularly at community colleges, can be a positive solution to address the challenges faced by rural school districts,” Small School Districts’ Association director Calderon said. “By growing teachers from within these communities, rural districts can improve recruitment and retention efforts.”
Although the study recommended that community college credentialing programs focus on residents who already hold bachelor’s degrees, Steve Bautista of the Center for Teacher Education at Santa Ana College suggested that the 39 bachelor’s degrees already being offered in community colleges be expanded to include degrees that could lead to teacher preparation programs.
“Five of the nine TEP deserts will fall away if we were able to utilize, in some capacity, community colleges to license teachers,” UCLA’s Mathews said.
UCLA researchers also recommend that the state take a comprehensive approach to recruiting and retaining teachers in these counties, including financial support, mentorship programs and professional development targeted to rural teachers. County offices of education should also collaborate to develop a regional marketing campaign to recruit teachers, according to the report.
State policy would have to change to put many of these programs in place, Francois said. Leaders from the state’s community colleges, universities and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing could work together to produce a feasibility study on how to create a seamless bachelor’s degree and credential program at rural community colleges, she said.
“It’s going to take collaboration among folks that maybe haven’t collaborated together in bold thinking, and some courage to think about how we might do this differently in unique spaces,” she said.
The overreliance on undersupported part-time faculty in the nation’s community colleges dates back to the 1970s during the era of neoliberal reform — the defunding of public education and the beginning of the corporatization of higher education in the United States. Decades of research show that the systemic overreliance on part-time faculty correlates closely with declining rates of student success.
Furthermore, when faculty are equitably compensated and thus able to provide high-quality student-faculty engagement in and out of the classroom, students succeed at significantly higher rates.
Nonetheless, part-time faculty do not have job security, often teach at several different colleges, struggle to earn a living wage, are generally not paid for office hours, and are not compensated equally for the same work as their full-time counterparts. This two-tiered structure was never meant to be permanent. It has deprived students and colleges of having a fully supported faculty, and has mostly remained hidden from the public.
It is time for the California Community Colleges to address the hypocrisy at the heart of its institutions: decades of disinvestment from the faculty and thus, students. Transitioning from a two-tiered to a nontiered — unified faculty— model will better serve the students, colleges and the state of California. The concept of a unified faculty emphasizes the elimination of the two employment tiers — part-time and full-time — to create a nontiered structure.
This model is based on faculty and collegewide unity as opposed to the current structure that has produced a divided faculty, inequitable service to students, and stagnant or diminishing student outcomes. The K-12 system and the Vancouver model at Vancouver Community College exemplify education systems structured around a unified faculty model.
A unified faculty model would vastly improve student success rates and the efficiency of the California Community Colleges by prioritizing student-faculty engagement in and out of the classroom, ensuring a culture of academic freedom, increasing the number of faculty participating in college governance and institutional effectiveness processes, fulfilling the system’s civic engagement mission to prepare Californians to become active participants in the state’s democratic processes, and increasing college and systemwide fiscal stability.
In 1988, AB 1725, a landmark community college bill, codified in California education law the goal to have 75% of its credit instruction taught by full-time faculty. Given its overreliance on an undersupported part-time faculty, however, the system has never come close to achieving this goal. The fact that the state established such a goal and has invested in some yearly budget increases to improve part-time faculty conditions indicates California’s awareness of the problem and interest in addressing the inequities of the two-tiered model.
Taking inspiration from the Vancouver model, many of the California Community Colleges’ system partners and stakeholders have been preparing to launch a systemwide transition to a unified faculty model. While the creation and adoption of legislation could also support this transition, legislation is not necessary for a transition to begin at the college level. Individual colleges, for example, could pilot a unified faculty model to demonstrate its efficacy.
A statewide transition to a unified faculty model will require leadership and coalition-building among the statewide faculty unions, academic senate, Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, the Chancellor’s Office, and other stakeholder groups.
In the past two decades, the California Community Colleges system has undergone significant “reform,” narrowing students’ educational opportunities and shrinking the student body by more than 1 million students. For example, remedial instruction, English as a second language programs, and lifelong learning courses have been cut or severely reduced without public debate.
During this period, the system’s student outcomes have declined, stagnated or only slightly improved despite decades of so-called reform efforts. Furthermore, the system has not successfully met its transfer, employment, or equity goals over the past five years. After decades of narrowing the student experience, defunding instructional programs and curriculum, and deprofessionalizing the faculty, the community college system has failed the California public.
Investing in a unified faculty model would remedy the California Community College system that is currently struggling to bring back the millions of students who have been pushed out of their colleges. Prioritizing the faculty’s vital role in students’ lives, California will set a precedent for a truly inclusive and equitable educational system that will empower millions of students to positively impact the economy and democracy of California, the nation and the world.
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Debbie Klein is an anthropology professor at Gavilan College in Gilroy and a former president of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges.
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A student at the afterschool program at Stege Elementary School in the West Contra Costa Unified School District.
Credit: Sam Cleare
West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD) officials responded to complaints filed over ongoing teacher vacancies earlier this month. However, complainants say the district lacks a sufficient plan to fix the problem, and the next steps could include litigation if vacancies are not addressed.
“As teachers, our work is being harmed, our ability to do our job is being harmed,” said Sam Cleare, a West Contra Costa teacher. “But what truly hurts me the most is knowing that these students — I care about them so much — aren’t receiving an education.”
Three teachers in the district, including Cleare, filed complaints on Jan. 31 alleging that the district failed to provide students with qualified teachers, resulting in teachers taking on more classes and sacrificing prep time.
The district’s response acknowledged that the allegations are true — the district was out of compliance with the law because teacher vacancies have not been filled and are being covered by long-term or day-to-day substitutes. According to the response, vacancies weren’t filled because of teacher transfers and late notices from teachers who left the district in the 2022-23 school year.
The district also blames statewide systemic issues for contributing to the problem. Beginning in 2021, California schools had significant increases in teacher vacancies and declines in the number of new teachers, the response said, as the pandemic caused many educators to leave the profession.
“Any vacancy was not purposefully caused by the District,” Camille Johnson, interim assistant superintendent of human resources, said in the response. “The District has provided support and supervision for its students to the best of its ability within these limitations and has not purposefully caused any noncompliance.”
To address teacher shortages, the district is continuing to revise its strategies to increase retention and recruitment and has implemented “recruiting, development, and hiring measures.” Additionally, since August, the district has had officials at 25 job fairs and has posted job announcements on at least six job boards.
A coordinator has also been hired to develop and promote pathways for substitutes and employees to become permanent teachers, and the district is partnering with various universities and nonprofits for recruitment, the district’s response said.
Karissa Provenza, an attorney with civil rights law firm Public Advocates who is representing the three teachers said the district’s response is insufficient.
“They offer no solution or even a plan to discontinue these illegal practices.The response they’re supposed to provide is supposed to show how they’re actually solving the issue or attempting to solve it. Unfortunately, the district is illustrating a complacent status quo attitude towards fulfilling its legal obligations.”
Karissa Provenza
On April 19, nine days after the district responded to the complaints, Provenza sent the school board an appeal on behalf of her clients. The district has until Monday to provide a plan that explains how each vacancy will be filled and have a meeting with Provenza and her clients to address the vacancies.
“Should the district’s response continue to prove inadequate, we and our clients reserve all rights to pursue additional legal measures, including by filing suit in a California Superior Court to compel lawful compliance,” Provenza wrote in the appeal.
The appeal acknowledged the effect teacher shortages have had on schools but said that doesn’t relieve WCCUSD from filling each class with a qualified and credentialed teacher. If substitutes covering some of the vacancies are qualified to be permanently assigned to classes, that could be a short-term solution, the appeal said. Other short-term solutions suggested were placing credentialed administrators into vacancies for the remainder of the school year, employing individuals who hold a short-term staff permit or a provisional internship permit, and employing retired credentialed teachers, which the district has done before.
Distict officials did not respond to requests for comment on the appeal.
The vacancies
The three educators who filed complaints teach at Stege Elementary, Helms Middle and Kennedy High schools. Each school currently has four vacancies that have been open since the beginning of the school year or sometime in the fall.
At a school like Stege Elementary that has four out of 12 teaching positions vacant, about one-third of students “aren’t receiving an education,” Cleare said. “I’ve seen students blame themselves, or they become less interested in school.”
For the past seven years Cleare has taught at Stege, she said, the school year has either started out with vacancies or someone has left in the middle of the year. Teachers sometimes had extra students in their class for many weeks, Cleare said. She now has a class with fourth and fifth graders because of the vacancies.
“I can’t believe this problem has been going on for so long and so little is being done,” Cleare said. “It almost feels like they don’t care about the students.”
Cleare said she never has enough time to prepare lessons, and it’s common for extra students to be in classes because of substitute and teacher shortages. At one point, she had ages spanning from first to fifth grade in one class.
“We’re not going to stop taking action until we receive a full staff. This is a systemic issue. I know my students going to … Kennedy will also not have a teacher, so this issue follows them.”
Sam Cleare
West Contra Costa has fewer fully credentialed educators teaching in their field compared with the state average. According to data from the state Department of Education, the district had 78% credentialed teachers in the 2021-22 school year — the most recent data available. The state average was nearly 86%.
Excluding charter schools, WCCUSD also has the lowest rates of fully credentialed teachers compared with other districts in Contra Costa County, data shows. All other districts in the county are at 80% or higher.
Chronic absenteeism has been rising because of vacancies, according to the complaints, especially for students who need more support. There have been instances where groups of students were placed in the cafeteria because there weren’t enough teachers. Substitutes have covered some classes since the beginning of the school year to the extent that parents don’t know who is teaching their children day-to-day.
“We are starting to hear from parents who are really upset about what’s going on,” Provenza said. “We are continuing to hear that substitutes are not getting the support they need to support their students — it’s that turbulence that comes along with high number of vacancies.”
Substitutes can be authorized to cover classes for longer periods — usually 30 to 60 days, Provenza said, but at Stege, Helms and Kennedy, substitutes have taught classes longer. At Helms Middle, there’s a large portion of eighth graders who don’t have permanent teachers in math, science and English, the complaints said.
Teacher vacancies are disproportionately affecting students of color, according to the complaints. Stege Elementary has about 38% Black or African American students and 34% Hispanic or Latino students in the 2022-23 school year, according to data from the state Department of Education.
Nearly 83% of students at Helms Middle are Hispanic or Latino and about 7% are Black or African American, data shows. About 73% of students at Kennedy High are Hispanic or Latino and nearly 18% are Black or African American.
Cristina Huerta, the Kennedy High teacher who submitted a complaint, said vacancies have been “severely” affecting students’ ability to take Spanish courses. There are 143 students who are enrolled in Spanish but haven’t had a Spanish-credentialed teacher.
“For the first quarter of the school year, the students had a couple of long-term subs, but that did not last more than a couple of weeks, and then they bounced around as Kennedy teachers covered a different period without access to any curriculum,” Huerta said in an email.
Students have gaps in their Spanish education because some of the teachers covering the class aren’t credentialed to teach Spanish, Huerta said. Students will likely struggle in higher-level Spanish classes in the coming years.
“All in all, the vacancies have been disheartening, and I worry about the future of the Spanish program at Kennedy since the vacancy has been cut for next year, and we are no longer hiring a third Spanish teacher,” Huerta said. “ I’m not sure how our small department will be able to serve the Kennedy student population as they attempt to complete graduation requirements and enroll in higher-level classes for college preparation.”
Legislation that calls for providing all state teachers and aides with math and reading training passed its first legislative hurdle despite the uncertainty of funding and the skepticism of advocates for English learners who dislike the bill’s nod to instruction in the “science of reading,” including phonics.
Senate Bill 1115 has no secure source of money heading into a tight fiscal year, with Gov. Gavin Newsom all but ruling out money for new programs. His January budget includes $20 million for a designated county office to train coaches who would then train their own teachers in what they learned.
Neither the bill’s author, Sen. Monique Limon, D-Santa Barbara, nor its sponsor, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, offered a cost estimate at a hearing of the Senate Education Committee last Wednesday, though it would cost at least hundreds of millions of dollars to train 300,000 teachers. They said they were willing to phase in and focus funding, such as concentrating on early literacy and numeracy skills, and to look for federal and dedicated sources of money.
Thurmond said training teachers to enable all students to read effectively “is an issue of moral clarity.” Neither he nor Limon offered a cost estimate that could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
“In an age when we have access to substantial brain science about how students learn, it should be unacceptable to train only some educators in the best strategies to teach essential skills,” he said.
School districts have received billions of dollars between federal and state Covid relief funding, including money to address learning loss — money that could be used for teacher training — but none of that has been earmarked for that purpose.
State budgets have set aside $50 million to hire and train reading teachers in the most impoverished 5% of schools. But Thurmond said training of trainers, however, does not substitute for providing sufficient funding to ensure training for all teachers and support staff in “high-quality” programs in math and literacy.
The bill calls for the Department of Education to identify and recommend those high-quality programs by Jan. 1, 2026. For transitional kindergarten through sixth grade, those should align with “the science of reading” by focusing on results-driven methods of teaching, which may include, but is not limited to, offerings such as Lexia LETRS and CORE Learning.”
Singling out those specific trainings in the bill were red flags for two nonprofits that advocate for English learners: Californians Together and California Association of Bilingual Educators (CABE). The science of reading refers to research from multiple fields of science that confirm or discount theories on how children learn to read. LETRS and CORE Learning are intensive programs that explain a systematic approach to teaching phonics and other elements of reading consistent with the science of reading.
Californians Together and CABE, however, complain that those programs overemphasize phonics and “structured literacy” at the expense of English learners’ need for more attention to oral language and vocabulary development.
Calling Californians Together’s position on the bill a “tweener,” legislative advocate Cristina Salazar testified at a hearing last week, “We agree that we need more professional learning for educators, but we do have concerns with the bill. Specifically, it mentioned the science of reading, and it also names commercial programs.”
CABE legislative advocate Jennifer Bakers said her organization shares the same concerns and “hopes to have a collaborative conversation about a path to move forward.”
Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Boch, R-Yucaipa, asked Thurmond whether the intent is to train existing teachers in the new standards that new teachers will be trained on.
“Yes, that is correct,” Thurmond said.
Opposition from Californians Together and CABE this month factored into the quashing of a bill that would have required school districts and charter schools to train all TK to fifth-grade teachers and literacy coaches in instruction based on the science of reading and to buy textbooks from a list endorsed by the State Board of Education. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, ordered Assembly Bill 2222 shelved without a hearing to give time for negotiations with opponents, including the California Teachers Association.
At the hearing, Thurmond acknowledged similarities between the two bills, although AB 2222 would have been a mandate, while AB 1115 would recommend the selection of trainings.
Along with mandating the science of reading approach to instruction, AB 2222 would have required that all TK to fifth-grade teachers, literacy coaches and specialists take a 30-hour minimum course in reading instruction by 2028. School districts and charter schools would purchase textbooks from an approved list endorsed by the State Board of Education.
Thurmond said the language of AB 1115 is well balanced in that it refers to both the science of reading and the state’s English Language Arts/English Language Development framework, which includes multiple strategies necessary for all students, including English learners, to learn how to read.
New math framework
July will mark a year since the State Board of Education adopted a revised California Mathematics Framework, which took four years and three revisions to pass. The drafters and supporters agree that the framework, with emphasis on tangible applications of math, as well as a deeper conceptual understanding of it, will require a shift in teaching and extensive training. But no significant money has been allocated yet, and the process of reviewing textbooks and materials has yet to begin.
In an interview, Limon said it is important to raise the issue of teacher training now, even if legislation is tied to a future appropriation.
Part of the public debate in committing public dollars should be, What would the program look like, and how will it serve diverse students? she said. “There is value to that discussion,” she said. Before her election to the Legislature, Limon served for six years on the Santa Barbara Unified school board.
In 2022-23, only 46.7% of California students met grade standards on the state’s English language arts test; the percentages were 36.6% for Hispanic, 29.9% for Black, and 35.3% for economically disadvantaged students. The scores were worse in math: 34.5% of students overall, with 22.7% of Latino, 16.9% of Black, and 22.9% of economically disadvantaged students meeting standards.
California’s $4.1 billion investment in community schools is the largest in the nation. An investment of this size raises important questions about whether community schools are working and what difference they are making for students.
Community schools are intended to provide the multitude of opportunities and supports that students need to thrive and succeed. They include a rich array of integrated services, expanded learning opportunities, deep community partnerships, and importantly, offer a more democratic way of engaging with students, families and the school community to shape school priorities and vision.
Community schools are a complex endeavor that, when done well, substantially expand what schools do to support students — and who is included in this work. Assessing the implementation and impact of community schools is similarly complex.
The California Department of Education (CDE) recently requested proposals for an evaluator of the California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP) initiative and will make a selection this spring. We wish to share lessons for future evaluators of program, the department of education, and the county offices of education, districts, schools and communities implementing these community school models throughout the state and country. Ideally, whatever data is required for the state evaluation and grant compliance should also be usable to help schools and districts in guiding strategic, high-quality community schools implementation.
The suggestions below come out of our work as evaluators for Oakland Unified School District’s community schools initiative for many years while working at Stanford University’s Gardner Center, and as authors of a book about the effort to transform all the district’s schools into community schools.
Community schools are not a program that a school either has or does not have, but rather an approach to education with many gradations along a spectrum.
While many California schools have recently or will soon receive funding to become community schools, fully implementing the model can take years. Further, many of these schools already operated some elements of community schools prior to funding (such as expanded learning, school-based health services, positive discipline practices, coordination of services, or family engagement strategies), without the “community school” label. The community school grant, which includes funding for an on-site community school coordinator, is meant to expand and strengthen whole-child work and bring increased collaboration and coherence across many people, organizations and initiatives. Thus, identifying the community school “start date” as the receipt of CCSPP funds is not as clean as it may seem.
Lesson for evaluators: The multifaceted and fluid nature of community schools make traditional causal research designs challenging. Evaluators ideally should adopt a mixed-methods (qualitative and quantitative) approach that examines change over time at community schools and illuminates connections between quality implementation and desired outcomes. Evaluators should thoughtfully consider the extent to which it is possible to isolate the impact of community schools and be precise about which elements or stages of community schools are captured in any assessment of impact.
A multilevel strategy map can provide a framework to guide implementation and evaluation.
Community schools provide a range of additional services, engage families and community organizations, and align all of these toward school goals; increasing students’ well-being and, ultimately, educational success. Successful community schools are more than a site-level intervention and require intentional district support. Given the multifaceted nature of community schools, we recommend a theory of change or “system strategy map” at three levels. Assessing key activities and outcomes at the 1) System (school district), 2) Site (school and community), and 3) Individual (student and family) levels can help ensure a comprehensive evaluation and improve understanding of differences in implementation and outcomes across the state.
Impact on traditional measures of student success can take time, and is predicated on quality implementation. But there is a lot you can measure along the way.
Community schools are a whole child, whole school improvement strategy. It takes time to adopt new practices, integrate resources, cultivate meaningful collaboration, develop supportive structures, and shift culture. We are unlikely to see immediate effects on traditional measures of student achievement — e.g., test scores, graduation rates, attendance, and suspensions — for at least 3-5 years. We may start to see bumps in achievement for specific student subgroups as community schools are designed to precipitate more equitable access across opportunity gaps.
To impact long-term student wellbeing and success, quality implementation matters. Proximal indicators can show if schools are on the right track: for example, participation, knowledge, and use indicators (e.g., to what extent are students and families accessing services and opportunities; to what extent is staff aware of and utilizing community school resources); culture/climate indicators (e.g., levels of trust, collaboration, and participation); and if other enabling conditions are being met. Additionally, qualitative data is crucial for answering critical questions about how community schools are working, what is going well, what is not, and why.
These findings can directly inform program improvement at the LEA and state level. For example, some of our early research with Oakland Unified showed that many principals were struggling to understand their role in community schools development. In response to these findings, the district increased investment in professional development for site leaders.
Lessons for evaluators: Before assessing whether community schools are yielding desired results for students, it’s imperative to examine the extent to which implementation is happening as hoped and planned, such as, school-level coherence and collaboration and family-school partnerships. Further, an evaluation should include more nuanced indicators of student experiences beyond what is included in the California Data Dashboard and existing statewide culture/climate surveys to capture youth voice, cultural relevance and community connection.
The California Community Schools Partnership Program evaluator will set the tone for “what matters” in community school implementation across the state. Additionally, the evaluation activities should include support for schools, districts and county offices to help them use data in collaborative, participatory ways with their teams and community.
A strong evaluation of the California community schools initiative will provide lessons that inform ongoing school and district-level implementation, and give us an understanding of the difference community schools make for students and families.
